Adoption Update

Happy (early) 4th of July! We are enjoying the first day of our three day weekend. We ran a ton of errands this morning, so now we can get some things done at home and spend the rest of the weekend with family and friends. We are making progress on our paperwork. I think the only thing we have left for our homestudy is our medical reports which will be done in the next 10 days or so. We went yesterday to be fingerprinted for our FBI background check. What a memorable experience! There was a LOT of misunderstanding on the part of the sheriff's office, and they quoted us the wrong price twice. That wouldn't normally be a big deal, but we had to pay with a money order, so it meant two trips to the post office and back to the courthouse. Even after the second trip, apparently we still weren't on the same page, so they ended up doing our fingerprints for free! That of course meant a THIRD trip to the post office to cancel our money orders again, but it saved us $80!! It took me a few hours to get over how ridiculous the whole thing was, and to realize that I had prayed before we left and even in the middle of it all for God to provide what we needed and to work out all the details. I think so many times I'm looking for Him to answer my prayers in a certain way, and when it doesn't look the way I think it's going to, it takes me awhile to recognize His hand. It is so silly of me to ask Him to provide everything we need for this process, and then to complain when He tries to save us $80!

Today we took our fingerprints, new money orders, and other paperwork to be FedExed to the FBI. This part has been stressing me out a little more than the others because there were so many details to it....I just knew I was going to forget something or do something wrong. Even the actual shipping process was painstakingly detailed, so I wasn't really looking forward to sorting through all of that first thing this morning. We headed to FedEx Office at the mall, and as we were waiting to be helped I heard one of the employees declare....quite loudly! :)......to another customer that he was a Christian. Sure enough, he was the first person available to help us, so we explained to him why we were there and every little thing that had to be included with our package. He was SO helpful and before it was over he had prayed for our package to get where it needed to go as quickly as possible and then promised to continue praying for us! It has been so cool to see the people, songs, sermons, and circumstances that God has put in our paths to encourage us.

Next week is a busy week for me. I have my medical testing and individual homestudy interview. Michael's will be the following week. For now, we are very thankful for this holiday weekend to spend with our kids and extended family. We hope that you all enjoy this weekend and the time spent with family and friends. Happy 4th of July!